Posted by Kansas Property Solutions on 2023-12-22
Personal Property: An Overview Personal property, distinct from real estate, encompasses movable items and assets. In legal terms, personal property is often referred to as chattels or personalty in common law systems, and as movable property or movables in civil law systems. This classification helps differentiate personal property from immovable assets like land and buildings. Historical origins trace the term 'cattle' from Old French and Latin roots, symbolizing general movable personal property.
Classifications of Personal Property
Intangible Personal Property: This category includes assets that, while not physically movable, hold value. Examples include negotiable instruments, securities, and intangible assets such as service (economics) and chose in action.
Tangible Personal Property: These are physical items that can be moved, touched, or felt, such as furniture, clothing, jewelry, art, and household goods. Some tangible personal properties, like motor vehicles and boats, may have formal title documents to indicate ownership and transfer rights.
Other Distinctions and Implications
Accounting and Taxation: Accountants differentiate personal property from real property for depreciation purposes. Personal property often enjoys faster depreciation rates, and there are specialists in appraising these items.
Legal Rights and Limitations: Rights over movable property are generally more attenuated compared to immovable property. Statutes of limitations and prescriptive periods tend to be shorter for personal or movable property.
Security Interests: In common law, real property can be mortgaged, while personal property can be secured through chattel mortgages, trust receipts, or security interests. In civil law systems, a hypothec is a similar concept for securing real rights against property.
Personal Property Tax: Many jurisdictions impose a personal property tax, an annual tax on the privilege of owning or possessing personal property. This usually excludes household goods used within the household.
Sales Taxes: The distinction between tangible and intangible personal property is important in jurisdictions with sales taxes. For instance, in Canada, sales taxes traditionally focused on tangible personal property, though this has evolved with the adoption of value added taxes.
Personal versus Private Property: Economic and Political Theories
Personal Property: In socialist, Marxist, and some anarchist philosophies, personal property includes items intended for personal use, like toothbrushes, clothes, and vehicles. The acquisition of these items should be fair, with the owner having a right to exclude others.
Private Property: This concept relates to a social relationship between the owner and those deprived. Private property encompasses assets that generate capital, like factories and infrastructure, and is central to Marxist theory as it differentiates capital or the means of production from consumer goods.
Personal property is property that is movable.[1] In common law systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—any property that can be moved from one location to another.
Personal property can be understood in comparison to real estate, immovable property or real property (such as land and buildings).
Movable property on land (larger livestock, for example) was not automatically sold with the land, it was "personal" to the owner and moved with the owner.
The word cattle is the Old Norman variant of Old French chatel, chattel (derived from Latin capitalis, "of the head"), which was once synonymous with general movable personal property